The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

128 The syntax of early Englishpronouns, and that this position is not contingent on proclisis to Vf or enclisisto the topic. Rather, pronouns have a position of their own, and their positionrelative to Vf is determined by the movement requirements on Vf, to C ininterrogative and negative-initial contexts, to F in topic-initial contexts, andpresumably also in subject-initial contexts. This appropriately capturesPintzuk’s insight that the position of the finite verb in wh-initial clauses ishigher than in topic-initial clauses, while at the same time maintaining thattopic-initial ‘Verb-Second’ is restricted to root clauses: this is because the topicposition is Spec,CP and hence restricted to root contexts. V-movement is to F,a position lower than C, but the facts show that a more articulate version ofIP, consisting of at least three projections FP, NegP, and TP, is well supported.This more articulated structure brings us back to the phrase structure variationproposed by Pintzuk, in which the contrast between topic-initial sentenceswith and without preposing of the verb is attributed to variation in theheadedness of IP. We have now seen clear evidence that in topic-initial sentences,V-movement is to F, the head of the projection hosting pronouns, andwe might ask ourselves whether it would be attractive to assume that FP hasa similar variation in headedness. At this stage, it seems difficult to answer thisquestion. If the possibility of phrase structure competition is countenancedand if variation in headedness is likewise countenanced – but these are questionson which there is by no means consensus in the literature – there is noreason why FP could not have variation in headedness. One may wonder whyit is FP that gives evidence of this variation and not other functional projections.This is presumably an empirical problem and one which cannot besolved without very (perhaps impossibly) detailed data research. We leave thisproblem for now, noting, as discussed in chapter 1, that optionality is a persistentchallenge for any theoretical approach that aims at generalization. Theassumption of phrase structure competition is only one out of severalapproaches with which this problem can in principle be tackled.4.3.2.3 Quantitative evidenceAfter these analytical issues, let us return to evidential issues and lookat some figures for topic-initial constructions as we have now analysed them.Koopman (1998) presents some quantitative data on finite verb position inclauses introduced by object topics and PP topics: his article shows that thepattern discussed above with pronominal subjects in topic-initial clauses isabsolutely predominant: V-movement to F, with ‘non-inversion’ of pronominalsubjects is the norm (9 out of 624 examples have inversion, i.e. just over one percent). For topic-initial constructions with nominal subjects, the facts are morevariable: while inversion of the nominal subject is the norm in the works ofÆlfric (the most substantial part of Koopman’s corpus, with percentages